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CTBT unlikely to be ratified during Clinton's tenure

The White House signalled last night that it would accept in principle a plan to delay a senate vote on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty until after President Bill Clinton leaves office, says The New York Times.

While Clinton refused to publicly forswear a vote while he is president, his National Security Adviser, Samuel R Berger, suggested that the White House could live with terms guaranteeing that the senate would not act on the treaty until the next administration.

The next administration would assume office in January 2001 on the expiry of Clinton's current second and last term. Thus, the treaty has no chance of senate approval at least for the next 14 months.

Clinton had signed the treaty in September 1996 but the republican-controlled United States senate is unwilling to ratify it. In the 100-member body, the president's Democratic Party has 45 members against 55 of the Republican Party who are opposed to the CTBT. He needs a two-third-majority, some 67 votes, for its ratification which he does not have, forcing him to go in for delaying the voting.

Yesterday, the president, in writing, urged the senators to delay the vote scheduled for today. He accepted one of the two Republican Party's preconditions for postponement. So far, the president has resisted the other demand, that he agrees to delay any further action until the next administration.

White House officials have argued that this would weaken his ability to persuade Pakistan and India not to conduct more testing of nuclear explosives.

''That's a matter for the senate, in terms of their schedule and preferences,'' Samuel Berger said in an interview. ''It's not something the president felt would be responsible for him to say.''

The daily says that Senators John Warner (Republican) and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Democrat) were drafting a letter to senate majority leader Trent Lott and his democratic counterpart, Tom Daschle, requesting that senate action on the treaty be delayed until the 107th Congress convenes in 2001, and after a new administration is in place.

The daily quoted a spokesman for Lott, John Czwartacki, suggesting that the seeds for a deal were in hand, but many details needed to be worked out.

But Clinton, as he did on Friday, refused to concede that the pact would not be enacted during his presidency. ''This president believes that it is inappropriate for him to say to the world that the United States is out of the non-proliferation business during an election year,'' Berger said in the interview to the daily.

But the political reality is that Clinton does not control the senate calendar, and if Republicans and Democrats agree not to bring up the issue, it is effectively dead for the remainder of his presidency, the daily says.

The daily says senators Joseph R Biden of Delaware and Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrats on the foreign relations and armed services committee respectively, have voted reluctance to bring up the treaty again next year, but are opposed to putting that in writing.

UNI

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